First in Line

Anne Marie Colling is about as unassuming as a high school senior could be. At first glance she comes across a quite simple, confident and comfortable young lady. Nothing found after a little while would change that perception of the Zionsville girls lacrosse standout, who exemplifies the term "student-athlete" just about as well as anyone these days. But unlike many other fine student-athletes that the rated 4-star school seems to have loads of, Colling has definitely followed a road not traveled by her peers. And that would be an understatement. With a father that worked internationally as a financial consultant, Colling didn't arrive to the quaint Indianapolis suburb until eighth grade. Dad worked in Hong Kong, China, where Colling was born and lived for her earliest five years. Then it was off to California for about four years before crossing the other pond. The Colling family settled down in France, just a stone's throw from the border of Switzerland where Anne Marie went to school for four years. It might be a wonder why, especially after all that, Colling is a known face in girls lacrosse around a state where the sport is in its relative infancy. But the truth is that Colling is just one example of the variety of people the sport has drawn throughout the past five to eight years in Zionsville. "I guess I'm never scared to try something new," Colling says, after talking about how her childhood experiences have affected her in high school. Experiences that include serving as president of the French Club and an officer of Model United Nations. Where Colling has much in common with about everybody playing for the Zionsville Lacrosse Club, girls and boys, is that they all had those same sentiments about trying something new when picking up a sport not yet common to the region. And it's not that they all just tried something new, it's that Zionsville has been ahead of the curve and has developed dozens of "first timers" to mold what some would argue is the state's premier squad. This is from top to bottom, where the Club is now seeing the benefits of being a pioneer in developing middle school and grade school levels. Since the Indiana High School Lacrosse Association was formed in 1999 to help unite boys lacrosse as a club sport, and the following inception of the Indiana High School Women's Lacrosse Association in 2005, Zionsville is the only public school to win the state title. The boys have won twice ('03 and '06) since jumping in the league in 2000 and the girls captured the crown in '05. "There may be a few other programs in the state that might argue this, but I think from top to bottom, we are the best program in the state," says first-year boys coach Tim O'Shea, who had been building the team at Pike the past five seasons. O'Shea is close friends with the past two Zionsville head coaches, Tim Whipple and Adam Callahan, the latter of which played at Butler University at the same time as the new Eagles coach. But there are reasons other than the top-notch coaching that the program has made such a name for itself. Even before Whipple and Callahan, there was the duo of Joe and Joe that got the boys team up and running. That's Joe Schoener and Joe Stadelmaier. After the final regular-season game of the inaugural campaign against Cathedral, Schoener and Stadelmaier had a relatively on-the-service conversation with a gentleman by the name of Brian Welch, who was an assistant coach a few days a week for the brand new Irish squad. That conversation included Schoener and Stadelmaier sharing their idea of starting a middle school boys program, just two years after the varsity team came to fruition. Welch turned out to be the guy to help them dive into the middle school bracket, which couldn't have been a better idea to quickly allow the sport to grow in the area. "In my humble opinion, without a doubt, that is what bred almost all of the success we've had," says Welch, who grew up in upstate New York just like O'Shea. "I think a lot of it had to do with the basic blueprint Joe and Joe laid out. These guys had a vision and a plan." So Welch took that vision and began working on a boys team for seventh and eighth graders. In its first organized season in the spring of 2001, a team of 26 Zionsville players were part of a mini-league that included teams from Carmel, Park Tudor and St. Richards. The next season in '02, Zionsville doubled its middle school players to 52, and put things into fast forward with a fifth and sixth grade team in 2003 followed by third and fourth graders forming a group in 2006. "It was just huge," says junior Adam Braun, talking about the opportunity to start in sixth grade. "Without that, it would be really difficult to come out and compete at this level that our varsity program now plays at. The younger ones coming into high school are definitely getting a lot better." And outside of Zionsville and Carmel, lacrosse isn't a sport that is only being played on the north side of Indy. High school clubs have been added this spring at Center Grove, Roncalli, Tindley (IPS charter school) and International School. At Center Grove, they had 300 kids at the initial call-out meeting for interested athletes. That makes 16 boys teams added since 2001. But the Eagles have been the model of success, along with the way that Carmel has built its youth program through the Carmel Dad's Club. This year with O'Shea, however, Zionsville is taking another development step by adding "program director" to his title. The new coach will oversee the boys and girls programs from third grade all the way through varsity, mostly in an effort to streamline the experience for the kids. "The main thing that I've done so far is starting to make the language consistent so that we all use the same terminology as coaches," O'Shea says. "This isn't a situation where I'm going to get in the way of other coaches, but I do want to be a resource for them and build this program up to the best it can be." His main counterpart is Leslie Sherman, who has lead the girls team since inception. She has worked with past boys coaches in making lacrosse a co-ed effort at Zionsville, even though the two styles of play are very different between the genders. They share practice fields, they religiously attend each other's games and they share plenty of basic equipment that's common to both. "That's not because of any legislation, but because that's what is in the best interest of the kids," says Sherman. "I see it in terms of other programs that have boys and girls, where one of them is usually struggling. We help each other out and it's better for the whole program - a huge reason we have seen the success of the girls program so quickly." In reality, everything has gone quickly for Zionsville lacrosse over the years. So quick that O'Shea grins about this latest development of coordinating youth with high school more effectively. Maybe it will allow the program to set the bar even higher and add more state championships to its résumé. "That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing," says O'Shea, "would it?" Not if you're comfortable and confident in green and white.